


the way you know my face

by ohmcgee



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Midnighter (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Porn, Canon Universe, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 19:34:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14817557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmcgee/pseuds/ohmcgee
Summary: M finds him in a filthy alley in Moscow, turning some poor bastard’s face into hamburger meat.





	the way you know my face

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ictus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ictus/gifts).



> For ictus, who wanted more Jason/Midnighter fic in their life. Hope this doesn't disappoint <3

M finds him in a filthy alley in Moscow, turning some poor bastard’s face into hamburger meat. He watches from a distance, taking note of the kid’s stance, the way he holds his fists. He’s been trained, that’s for certain, but there’s a wildness in his eyes that has M’s instincts on high alert. This isn’t just some regular brawl in a back alley and this definitely ain’t some normal kid. 

M approaches a minute or two after the kid stops wailing on the guy, walks up to him the same way he’d walk up to a wild animal or a man with a bomb strapped to his chest. His mind fills in the gaps for him, plays out the scenario in his head, and M smirks a little, already impressed by the kid’s skills. Once he gets closer, M also realizes he’s not really a kid. Skinny, probably from being malnourished, but once he looks into his eyes M can tell he hasn’t been a kid for a long time.

“You mean to kill him or was that just a happy accident?” M asks as he looks down at the body on the ground.

The kid doesn’t say anything, just looks up and blinks at M, like he hadn’t even noticed he was standing there. He’s got the prettiest damn eyes M’s ever seen, bright blue contrasting with the darkness of his hair, but where M can usually read a guy inside out just from looking him in the eye, he gets nothing here. The kid’s like a blank slate.

“Kid,” he says. “You alright? That guy hurt you or anything?”

A laugh that sounds sharp and painful bubbles out of the kid’s throat. “No,” he says. “He didn’t hurt me.” Then he takes off running like someone’s after him, jumping up onto a fire escape and scaling the side of the building until he reaches the roof.

Yeah, M thinks, brows drawing together. Definitely not normal.

 

: : : 

 

A few weeks later, M’s having coffee at a little outdoor cafe in Paris when he hones in on a familiar voice in the crowd. Somewhere behind him, the kid M had stumbled upon in that alley weeks ago is ordering a croissant and a cafe au lait in perfect French, adding a cute little pick up line after he’s ordered, making the waitress giggle. 

M listens carefully as he sips on his coffee and pretends to read the newspaper in front of him. After the giggling waitress leaves to put in his order, the kid’s French slips easily into German as he addresses someone at the table with him. M’s German is pretty rusty, but he remembers enough to know that they’re making an arms deal. The kid wants guns. Lots and lots of guns.

He’s not sure why, but after the kid pays and leaves, M throws a good amount of cash on his own table and decides to follow him. There was just something about the look in his eyes that night in the alley, the brittle way that he laughed that has M itching to find out what his deal is. It’s not often he comes across somebody he can’t figure out. After trying to trail the kid for a few blocks, but staying far enough behind that he’s not made, M realizes he’s fucking lost him.

“Looking for me?” A voice says from behind and M turns around, quickly throwing an arm up to block a roundhouse kick. “Could’ve joined me for coffee if you wanted to chat, you know.”

“And interrupt your conversation?” M asks, blocking a punch, another kick. “That would’ve been rude. What’s a nice kid like you need with all that firepower anyway?”

The kid grins at him sharply, baring his teeth like weapons, and pulls out a move that M doesn’t have time to block and ends up taking a boot to the solar plexus and stumbling backwards. The kid keeps coming at him, relentlessly throwing punches, pulling out all kinds of different fighting techniques, from Krav Maga to straight up dirty street fighting. His eyes are different today, M notices when he gets up close, sort of wild and manic instead of dead and empty.

“I was just gonna say,” M grins when the kid shoves him against the brick, wedging his arm underneath M’s throat. There’s a smear of blood on his bottom lip where M’s fist connected with his face a minute ago and M briefly imagines leaning in and licking it off. “Sounds like fun. Need any help?”

The kid’s forehead get a little wrinkle in it when he squints at M like he can’t quite figure him out. M thinks he knows the feeling.

“Stop following me,” the kid snaps, then takes off same as before.

 

: : :

 

A few nights after that M’s renting a room in Prague while he works on taking down a trafficking ring. The last night he’s there, as soon as he finishes up the job, he returns to his room to wash off all the blood and brain matter before catching his train. But as soon as he opens up the door and walks inside, M’s body tenses up and his adrenaline spikes, sending him straight into fight mode. 

He reaches over to flip the light switch and finds that the room isn’t empty. That same kid he ran into in St. Petersberg and Paris is sitting on the edge of his bed, staring down at his hands. He’s filthy, dirt and blood all over his shirt and in his hair. Something’s very, very wrong.

“Dead,” the kid says, shaking. “I was dead. Not anymore. Now they’re dead. I killed them.”

“Who’s that?” M asks, staying right where he is. He’s got no idea what’s going on with this kid, so it’s probably best not to spook him.

“Bad guys,” the kid whispers. “I killed them.”

“Sometimes bad guys deserve to --”

“Not supposed to kill,” he continues, then finally looks up at M. “Do you think they’ll come back too?”

‘Listen, kid,” M says, taking a couple of slow, easy steps forward. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but it’s okay. You’re okay here, alright? You’re safe.”

“I was  _ dead! _ ” The kid screams at him, launching his whole body off the bed at M, and starts clawing at him. “ _ I was dead I was dead I was dead --” _

M refuses to fight him, just lets the kid thrash around and claw at his face, screaming the words over and over until he starts choking on sobs that sound like they’re being ripped out of him.

“He didn’t,” he beats his fists against M’s chest. “I died and he didn’t -- Of  _ course _ he didn’t. We don’t kill. But I killed. I killed them. I  _ killed _ them.”

He’s crumbled on the floor now, staring at his hands again. “It won’t come off.”

M leaves him alone just long enough to get a glass of water and a bottle of pills from his bag, dropping one inside the glass of water before handing it to him.  M wasn’t sure he would, but the kid takes the water and drains the glass, and soon after that, he passes out.

 

: : :

 

“Been a while since I’ve been roofied,” M hears a few hours later, the kid’s voice soft and scratchy from sleep. “I’m going to cut your dick off and feed it to you, by the way. Just gimme a sec to wake up.”

M chuckles and gets up, grabbing another glass of water for him. The kid raises an eyebrow at him when M offers it to him.

“It’s just water. Promise.”

“What the fuck do you want?”

“Kid,” M says. “You’re the one that broke into my room. Remember?”

For a second, the kid looks disoriented and confused, like maybe he doesn’t, but then he takes the glass from M and drinks half of it before putting it down on the nightstand.

“Who are you?” He asks.

“Midnighter,” M tells him. “Your turn.”

The kid’s brows draw together again, but eventually he says, “Jason.”

“Okay, Jason,” M says, pulling a chair away from the small table in the corner and taking a seat across from Jason. “I have some questions.”

Jason looks back down at his hands. “Yeah. Join the club.”

 

: : :

 

They talk for at least an hour straight. Jason tells him how he died. And how he came back. M listens, trying not to let the horror he feels show on his face. Jason tells him about the Lazarus Pit, or what he can remember of it, about how some psycho assassin chick has been grooming him to be America’s Next Top Killer. 

Jason’s hands start to shake when he tells M he doesn’t remember everything, that he blacks out so often most of the time he doesn’t even know what day it is. He tells M that before he died he thinks he was a hero.

“Now,” he says, looking down at his hands again. “Now I can’t get the blood off of me.”

When he gets done talking, Jason’s exhausted. He’s pale and shaking all over and M’s pretty sure it’s taking every ounce of energy he has to hold back tears.

“Listen,” M says. “You need to eat something, but I don’t have shit here. I’m gonna run down to the shop for a sandwich. Okay?”

Jason just nods and curls back under the blankets, closing his eyes as M shuts the door behind him.

When M gets back to the motel the bed is empty, the curtains swaying in the breeze. On the small table in the corner, carved into the wood with the tip of a knife, is the word  _ thanks. _

 

: : :

 

M doesn’t even recognize Jason the next time he sees him. It’s been five years since he first saw him in St. Petersberg. Five years since he looked into those dead eyes and wondered what could cause something so pretty to look so soulless. 

This time M has him pressed up against a brick wall, assuming he was just another one of the ninjas that had been attacking him for the last thirty minutes, his hand tight around his throat. M doesn’t realize who he’s choking the life out of until Jason says, “Hey, don’t I know you?”

M lets his grip go immediately and Jason just grins back at him before shoving M to the side and throwing a knife at the ninja who was about to run M through with a katana.

“Long time no see,” M says as they fight the rest of them off, moving together like dance partners until every last assassin is dead or knocked out. “Friends of yours? Cause I sure as hell don’t know ‘em.”

“Not really,” Jason says, kicking one in the guts for good measure. “What are you doing in Gotham?”

“Sightseeing,” M deadpans. “Why is there a bat on your chest?”

Jason sighs and pulls a pack of smokes from one of the pockets on his vest. “It’s complicated.”

“Complicated,” M repeats. Jason hadn’t told him this part, but it’s not hard for M to put two and two together now that it’s in front of him. The bat on his chest. The Red Hood.  _ We don’t kill.  _  “He let you die. He didn’t avenge you. And you get him back by...plastering his brand all over you? What kind of sense does that make exactly?”

Jason takes the stupid red helmet he’s wearing off and whips his head around to glare at him. He opens his mouth to say something, then just shakes his head and lights up a cigarette, staring up at the night sky as he takes his first drag.

“I almost killed him. And the kid that replaced me,” Jason says. “I almost burned this whole fucking city down.”

“Why didn’t you?” M asks, feeling like he probably already knows the answer.

“You know why,” Jason murmurs, then walks right up into M’s space, exhaling smoke out of the corner of his mouth as he looks up at him. “Why’d you follow me in Paris?”

M reaches up and drags his thumb across Jason’s bottom lip, the same thing he’d imagined doing years ago.

“You know why.”

When Jason flicks his cigarette off the side of the roof and looks up at him, M realizes that for the first time he knows what Jason’s going to do next.

 

: : : 

 

M follows Jason back to a safehouse that’s mostly just four walls and a mattress on the ground, but that’s all they really need. Jason strips him impatiently, catching M’s mouth with his teeth as he yanks off his shirt and unbuttons his pants, then M grabs Jason and throws him down on the bed so he can do the same to him.

They fuck like it’s something they’ve been waiting years to do, gasping and clawing at each other, M grabbing Jason’s face and squeezing it between his hands as he fucks into him. It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense, if he thinks about it. They only ran into each other a few times when they were both in Europe years ago and Jason had barely been present for any of them, but that’s not how it feels now. Now, M remembers how many nights he couldn’t sleep, worried about the scared kid that cried his heart out in Prague, the feral one that beat a guy’s face in in St. Petersberg. Seeing Jason again, seeing him alive and somewhat sane and whole, it had done a number on him. That’s for sure.

And Jason -- M’s not sure he’ll ever figure Jason out. He gasps and claws and gropes at M like he’s going to die if he doesn’t touch him, if M doesn’t keep fucking him deep and good and hard. There’s wildness even in his desperation, like he might lose control of it any second and come unspooled again, and it’s fucking  _ beautiful. _

Neither of them lasts very long. That wasn’t what this was about. This was about need and hunger, about finding an outlet for the crazy, manic energy that flows through their blood. M had seen Jason’s fingers quivering as he lit his cigarette on that roof and he realized that the bloodlust Talia had poisoned him with was still there, right beneath the surface, just itching to crawl out. For Jason it was either fuck or kill and M was more than happy to be that outlet for him.

Because some people? Some people just weren’t killers. Talia tried her damnedest to make him into her personal little murder toy, but you can’t make someone into something they’re not. That’s what had fucked Jason up so bad. Talia had played with his head, put all these bloody and violent ideas in it when he was still recovering from all the trauma he’d been through. She’d taught him how to kill, but she couldn’t make him a killer. Every time Jason took a life it just fractured him a little more inside because it wasn’t who he was.

_ I think I used to be a hero. _

M looks at the kid sleeping on the mattress as he puts his clothes back on, dark black hair and a head full of horrors, muscles still tensed up, even as he sleeps.

“You always were, kid,” he murmurs before he slips out the door.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/settings), if you fancy.


End file.
